Rambling in the Woods

I have heard of shotguns in the back of pick-ups but this is ridiculous:

The robins hatched around May 15 and are getting ready to leave the nest:

There are two birds in the nest and the mother robin flies back and forth all day bringing them food.  I noticed while trying to take pictures of the babies that the mother  has a very distinctive call that makes the babies immediately crouch down in the nest. 

  Other bird sightings include these six ominous vultures on top of a barn:

Recently we went on a bike ride on a local trail.  Since the weather was perfect I expected the trail to be quite crowded  but we were the only bicyclists and these were the only pedestrians we saw for many kilometers:

We also saw this family of geese:

Every year for the nine years we have lived here robins have  built a nest on our front porch.  This is not a particularly good place to set up housekeeping since there is an astonishing amount of human foot traffic on the porch.  Most years the robin gives up on the nest pretty early in the game and, I hope, builds  a nest in a more secluded area.  This year the robin decided to stick it out:

This robin can frequently be found sitting on her nest.   She flies to a nearby tree when she is disturbed which is quite often since we keep forgetting she is there.  This spot must have some very desireable feature that is obvious to robins because a nest is built here every year in this exact spot. But only one other time has the robin stayed in the nest until her eggs have hatched.  We were particularly  fortunate that year  because we happened to be leaving the house to catch the school bus just as the baby birds were taking their first flight.  Needless to say we stayed to watch, missed the bus and had to drive to school but it was well worth the inconvenience. Sometimes you just have to rearrange your priorities .  I’m hoping we’ll be so lucky this year.

It seems that  I know many people who believe that to get the things you want you have to send the thought out into the universe and you will be rewarded.  I am very skeptical.   However, when we decided that we would like to adopt a mixed breed puppy I thought that sitting on the couch thinking about puppies would be a lot easier, physically and psychologically,  than going to the local shelter and  choosing only one or two  dogs.  So I thought very hard about the puppy we wanted.  Although I often appeared to be sitting on the couch drinking tea and staring into space, I was really very busy sending thoughts out  into the universe.  It was hard work and it took hours but eventually  I was rewarded with these: 

I know.  They are kittens.  I seem to be having a communication problem with the universe.

This is Frey:

Frey  was originally named Freya after the Norse goddess associated with cats but the vet told us that our ability to determine the sex of kittens was somewhat limited.  Fortunately Freya had a twin brother named Frey.

This is Fezziwig:

Fezziwig is named after one of my favourite characters in literature. 

If you need me I’ll be on the couch looking like I’m staring into space.